Learn More About the pH Levels in Common Drinks

As a family dentist, we know that people have a special relationship with their dentist. When you walk into the family dentist office, you are placing your trust in us to take care of your teeth, often from generation to generation. People come to us with all their needs, and more importantly, they trust us to educate them so they know how to best take care of their own teeth. Treating families, we have learned to take the holistic approach, where we prefer to use prevention over waiting. There are many things that can affect your teeth, cause you to lose your enamel, and even allow for decay. We want to make sure that you know as much as you possibly can to avoid things that can damage your teeth, and one of the most common things few people know about are the pH levels in drinks and how they affect your teeth. To that end, we have started having conversations with our patients about pH levels in common drinks, explaining what pH levels are and how they can damage your enamel. Before we start to talk about things like pH levels, it is important to first set the stage by reminding our patients that any time you put something in your mouth, it will affect your teeth. Knowing how substances affect your enamel is one of the key elements to having a long and healthy relationship with your teeth.

So as a family dentist, how do pH levels affect the teeth, and what exactly are pH levels? When you look at things in terms of chemistry, every substance has a pH level. This includes common drinks that your family consumes. Water is considered to be neutral because it has a pH level of seven, and this has no effect on your teeth. This is an important baseline for a family dentist and is one of the reasons why we always recommend to our patients that you drink water rather than any other drink. However, most people do drink any number of common drinks, which is why talking about pH levels is important. All substances are divided into being either acidic or alkaline, depending on their pH levels. Here are a few common drinks and their pH levels.

Soda is one of the extreme beverages that patients of a family dentist drink. Sodas like Coca-Cola have a pH level of 2.52, which in technical terms means it is closer in acid levels to phosphoric acid with a pH level of 2.00 than it is to neutral water. Other drinks like Mountain Dew (pH level of 3.22), root beer (pH level of 4.75), and Dr. Pepper (pH level of 2.95) all have a severely acidic composition that is damaging to teeth. When you consider that enamel starts to dissolve when it comes in contact with any substance that has a pH level of 5.5, you realize that these drinks are extremely harmful, especially when it comes to children with developing teeth.